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The Chilli presents an extract of the UK Chancellor Gordon Brown’s speech while on his visit to Bangalore, India, which focuses on enterprise and educational exchanges:
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“Minister, President, Vice-President,
Let me say it is an honour for me to be here today in this great city of Bangalore; to be able to address the Confederation of Indian Industry, to meet so many of India's most successful business leaders; and to be sharing a platform with Kamal Nath, your trade minister whose reputation extends to every continent of the world; and to be here not only with my colleague Alistair Darling but with 150 of the most senior businessmen and women from Britain, led by Lord Karan Bilimoria, the chair of the Indo-British Partnership Network, along with the head of the Confederation of British Industry, himself a great friend of India, Richard Lambert.
And it is also a great privilege to have the chance to witness at first hand the astonishing pace of change in India, sense the real dynamism and excitement it is generating, witness the vibrancy and potential of this vast country, facing what is your new tryst with destiny, as you enter a new era in your role in the world.
Now as the Times of India has rightly said, India is poised: your time is now - "a pulsating dynamic new India is emerging...an India that does not follow but an India that leads" - an India ready to embrace the right to an increased voice, side by side with the responsibilities of an economic openness and enhanced international cooperation that come with it.
And as India today claims its rightful place in the emerging new world order, let me say I am sure that India and Britain together - the world's largest democracy and one of the world's oldest democracies, with our shared history and culture, and common values of understanding and tolerance - can, working in unison, play a critical role as partners in addressing the great challenges of our times.
Let me first congratulate the Indian businesses here today for your individual and collective success - a success story now recognized and applauded in every continent.
The Indian economy today growing at more than eight per cent - a rate of growth that fills every other finance minister with envy - an India which has doubled your national income in just 15 years, doubled your share of world exports, lifted over a hundred million people out of poverty; an India that over the next five years will create one in every four of all new jobs in the world, and by 2020 an extra 200 million jobs - more than America, Europe and China combined.
And in less than three decades from now you will be the world's third largest economy:
- You are already the world's fifth largest market for telecoms;
- The world's fourth largest producer of medicines;
- The world's third largest market for new aircraft orders;
- The world's second largest producer of software applications;
- And are seen worldwide as the first choice office of the world.
Nobody should be surprised about the high tech, high value, innovative quality and the progress from the country that invented the zero, and first calculated the value of "Pi", and is now the only country outside America and Japan to have developed a super computer - a tribute to your enterprise.
I am pleased that today the ties that bind Britain and India together are becoming stronger than ever and our mutual cooperation is now at such a heightened level, that today:
- 500 Indian companies now operate in Britain with almost fifty Indian companies listed in London;
- And with UK now the fifth largest investor in India, India is now the third largest investor in Britain, with 60 percent of Indian FDI in Europe going to Britain, trade between our two nations now worth £8 billion - growing at the astonishing pace of 20 percent a year - doubling over the last five years;
So we welcome you - Indian companies - investing in Britain and listing in London - the deepest and most efficient market for foreign companies. I want you to see Britain - the world's most open economy - as your second home, your location of choice outside your country. And in the same way we thank India for welcoming British investments in India, and we will never be complacent because we know we must be competitive and innovative to succeed.
And the family and cultural ties grow too. Britain issues more visas - 375,000 - to Indians than any other country each year, an even higher number of Britons - 500,000 - travel to India. Four years ago there were less than 20 flights a week to India now there are more than 70 direct flights.
And let me here in Bangalore also celebrate the immense contribution of people of Indian origin in Britain: 1.5 million men and women, 2 per cent of the population but over 4 per cent of GDP, including some of Britain's most successful young entrepreneurs - and a mobility between our two countries that is now seeing young British Indians return to the land of their parents and grandparents to set up new enterprises here.
Yesterday our trade secretary Alistair Darling held the latest meeting of the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO), and tomorrow when I meet with your prime minister and finance minister I will launch the UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue.
Underpinning all this progress and cooperation is a world undergoing the most rapid and extensive transformation ever seen - in pace, scale and impact of change - the biggest and most rapid shift in production and services the world has seen, Asia now producing more than Europe.
Thirty years ago India and emerging Asia accounted for just one eighth of the world economy; ten years ago one fifth; now it is almost a third; and in the years to come half the world's growth will come from China, India and emerging Asia.
The significance of this global transformation, greater even than the changes that brought the world's first industrial revolution, can no longer be underestimated.
Globalization requires at its heart what democracy provides best - openness to the flow of ideas, people capital and goods, the potential of every individual unleashed, and public institutions capable of holding decision makers to account.
Because globalization is about the global sourcing of information, ideas, capital, goods and often even people - a world in which products designed in one country, manufactured in another by companies owned in another, with R&D in yet another - there is a premium on both openness - openness between all countries, large and small, and on making global connections work.
The post 1945 system of international institutions - built for a world of sheltered economies and just 50 states - is not yet broken, but for a world of 200 states and an open globalization, is urgently in need of modernization and reform.
It is time to formally recognize on a more consistent and regular basis the reality of this emerging new world order.
The best economic policy is a good education policy.
That is why our aim in Britain is what I detect is your ambition for India: to celebrate and not constrain scientific and engineering exploration and discovery, to nurture the new creative industries, to continuously innovate in new products and services and to create a skilled and adaptable workforce in a nation of ambition and aspiration where there is no cap on potential and no ceiling on talent.
And by making all needed reforms, all necessary legislative changes, reshaping all essential to secure an outward looking country open to new ideas and new reforms that ensures globalization works for all.
So let me commend what India is achieving: your commitment to raise your education budget to 6 per cent of GDP.
Today here in Bangalore I have visited high-tech companies and research institutes - through new establishing partnerships and locating new offices - strengthening their links with Britain.
On Friday I will visit Mumbai and discuss with financial service leaders from Britain and India how we deepen our links. I am delighted that our banks and insurance companies sell products here in India and want India to see Britain as the location of choice, as we aim to maintain London as the world's largest, most diverse and innovative, and most open and well regulated capital market.
And then I will go to Bollywood and see our cultural and creative ties. And it is a pleasure this year for Britain to host the International Indian Film Academy Awards.
In each of these areas India is one of the engines of world growth, and I believe Britain must be a full participant and indeed your partner of choice. To help expand all our trading ties further, I am today announcing UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) in India is increasing its support in order to fully fund the Indo-British Partnership Network - my aim is to double exports to India by 2010 and quadruple exports by 2020.
In future years we see education as one of our greatest export earners: it has doubled in the past five years, surpassing insurance, oil and aviation, and by 2020 could contribute to over £50 billion a year to the British economy.
Nowhere is the expansion happening more quickly and with greater results than here in India - reinforcing our cultural and linguistic affinities - and adding significantly to the skills base that will underpin India's place as an economic powerhouse.
Already there are 60 joint programmes, a further 65 research collaborations between British and Indian universities, and over 20,000 Indian students studying in Britain - three times as many as in 2000 - with a further 5,000 students distance - learning British courses here in India.
We want to work with the world class Indian IT industry to make the UK an international leader in the creative and supportive use of IT for education;
We want to promote further expansion in the number of international students at UK further and higher education institutions - such as the partnership between you, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and Imperial College London's new Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
And we want to promote the role of our and your universities, institutes and agencies as international hubs for learning and research –
In each case increasing British and Indian cooperation in the innovation and expansion of the high skill, high value added, high tech industries of the future.
The world order will also work best with cooperation and collective action on climate change and the fast developing environmental technologies.
And Britain and India, with our own roles in our own continents and histories that bind us together are uniquely well placed to make globalization work.
In the words of Gandhi: "We must be the change we wish to see."
Thank you.”
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